


Heaven’s Grief Brings Hell’s Rain

by SleipnirLokison



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Drug Addiction, Gen, It's kinda AU, PTSD, Recreational Drug Use, but not really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-15
Updated: 2013-07-15
Packaged: 2017-12-20 07:02:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/884334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SleipnirLokison/pseuds/SleipnirLokison
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John's time in Afghanistan leaves him with serious PTSD.</p><p>Therapists. Drugs. And fights in dodgy places.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heaven’s Grief Brings Hell’s Rain

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from the Fall Out Boy song Just One Yesterday.
> 
> Used my old English book for this, the question was '“…after the war.” Write a short story suggested by the above title.' You can probably see why I jumped at this one with a Sherlock fic in mind.
> 
> If there are any mistakes just point them out, I couldn't find any that I haven't fixed so 'gis a shout and I'll fix them.
> 
> Feedback encouraged.

 

_Hot. It was so hot, the landscape in front of him was hazy from the sweltering heat. His platoon was rigid with tension. They had been camped out in the blistering Afghan sun for the best part of three hours now, waiting, always waiting. It was one of the downsides of the army you could spend hours or days waiting for something to happen and then when it did everything hit you at once without warning. Plus you were not only responsible for your own fragile life but the lives of your fellow soldier’s, especially as an army doctor and a captain. This was not something that bothered him much he thrived under pressure, relying on his natural instinct and nimble surgeon’s hands._

_So when a hail of bullets erupted upon his platoon it was no surprise that his inner doctor put his own safety second, and his inner soldier kicked in at roughly the same moment launching him into action when Bryar got hit._

_Screaming orders at his men, he ignored their warnings and, sprinted across the sand dodging bullets as he went. Skidding to an abrupt halt he assessed Bryar’s wounds. The bullet had hit him in his right upper thigh severing his femoral artery. He inwardly cursed himself; he would bleed out within minutes._

_With a thud he dumped his pack in the sand scavenging for bandages. Compressing the wound with the bandages, earning him a pained groan, he talked to Bryar in his ‘I’m a soldier but also a doctor and you will listen to me, voice.’_

_‘You’re going to be fine, Dan. Don’t worry we’ll have you out of here in no time.’_

_In a tight pained voice Dan gasped out, ‘Jus- just tell Alex I’m so- sorry and I love h-,‘ he trailed off, his eyes fluttering closed. The blood had seeped through the bandages drenching his hands in warm sticky blood._

_‘SHIT. No, Dan listen to me wake up,’ he pleaded patting the man’s cheek, he was much too young to be in the middle of this hell. A constellation of tears scattered across his lashes._

_In the next moment a searing pain ripped through his left shoulder, a guttural scream escaped his dried out and chapped lips. His whole vision turned white before he collapsed to the scorching hot ground._

_It wasn’t true what they said, your whole life doesn’t flash before your eyes when you are dying. No, but every miniscule detail becomes apparent in those moments before your eyes became too heavy to keep open, when all you want to do is sleep. Dying is a tiring ordeal once the adrenaline has fizzled out of your system._

_His vision was beginning to go fuzzy at the edges, the clear blue sky washed out above him stretching on for leagues. He could hear the muffled shouts of his men. Each thought was punctuated with another round of bullets piercing the air. It was as if his head was submerged under water, all his senses were abating further with each passing minute._

_Out of the corner of his eye he could see blood. He let his head loll to the side where he could see Dan’s blood drenching the water starved land, the deep red of the blood was startling against the pastel sand. Blood was gushing from his shoulder mingling with the other man’s. When it came down to it rank meant nothing his rank as captain didn’t protect him from the bullet that ripped through his flesh just as the one had done to his second lieutenant._

_Black spots clouded his vision, ‘Please God, let me live,’ he gasped out as a peaceful bliss took over him and he slipped from consciousness into a painless slumber._

 ‘John!’ Ella called as if she had been repeating his name for some time.

John Snapped out of his reverie focusing back in on the nondescript room. Each wall was painted with a neutral egg shell blue, he supposed it was angled at being soothing. It was not soothing. Not in the slightest, he felt restless and uncomfortable. The woman sitting in front of him was prying into his subconscious week after week dredging up memories that were best left unsalvaged from his broken mind.

One would probably ask why he keeps returning, well he simply had nothing else to do with his life anymore. Since returning to London he has been drifting into a dangerous place filled with dark thoughts. This weekly outing returned some semblance of routine to his bleak life not knowing what day of the week it was, at least with the therapy sessions he had a reason to remember the day and leave the, in every sense of the word, beige bedsit.

Ella repeated what he assumed she was trying to ask him before his mind wandered back to the dusty Afghan heat, ‘The dreams, John, are they still the same?’

‘Yes,’ he replied shortly, not wanting to talk about his fragile mind anymore.

~*~

_John stared down into the once vibrant metallic blue eyes of Dan, his whole countenance was washed over with fear and was deathly pale. John stood above him arm outstretched pointing his army issue Sig Sauer at his forehead. Without blinking he pulled the trigger letting off a piercing shot. Dan’s skull shatter and blood droplets stained John’s skin, a dark chuckle erupted from deep within his chest._

Bolting upright he gasped, air filled his lungs stinging his now raw oesophagus on its way in. He curled in on himself putting his head between his legs panting. This had become a regular occurrence since returning, waking in the dead of night drenched in sweat fighting off a panic attack.

As his breaths became less rapid and regained a somewhat steady pace he flopped back down on his bed scrubbing his hands over his face. The night terrors had escalated in the past month, he was not only reliving the day in painful clarity but his mind was now fabricating and distorting it into a warped sadistic series of events.

~*~

John hobbled into the room over to his usual seat across from Ella, the cushion of the plush leather chair sank beneath him.

‘How have you been, John?’ Ella inquired.

He did not want to tell her about the escalation of his dreams or his desperate attempts to avoid them, which entailed him forcing himself not to sleep. Staring at his hands he simply said, ’Fine.’

Something must have shown on his features as she replied, ‘The dreams still the same?’ giving him a knowing look.

‘Ye-, No. No, actually they’re not,’ he sighed, there was no point in lying to her anymore. After all he was the one paying for this hour every week, may as well get his monies worth.

‘What has changed about them?’ It sounded as if she was patronising him, but he knew that was just his own mind manipulating the truth again.

‘I am no longer saving them, I am killing them in cold blood.’

‘How much sleep have you been getting,’ she added gently.

John bit out his reply, ‘None,’ a bitter tinge masking his voice.

‘I will give you a prescription for a ten milligram dose of diazepam,’ she stated whilst scribbling onto her notepad, ‘You are haunted by the war, John, it is completely normal to have these dreams-‘

Anger welled up inside him, he slammed his fist down on the armrest of the chair startling Ella to falter mid sentence, ‘It is not normal, killing men who I served with for years. In what universe is that normal,’ he snarled out.

~*~

John sat on the edge of his bed twisting the packet of pills over in his hand, he was never one to take pills to solve his problems. In fact he made a point not to take them, he had seen firsthand how it can spiral out of control and turn into an addiction. His sister had killed herself doing so.

He needed them though, he was getting weaker and thinner as each day sluggishly passed by him. The insomnia was killing him slower than the bullet that put him there in the first place.

Before he could talk himself out of it he popped one of the pills out of its package and dry swallowed it. John lay back onto his bed waiting for them to take effect. When they did however he was not expecting the feeling of being dragged under to resemble his last minutes of consciousness in Afghanistan. _Black spots clouded his vision, ‘Please God, let me live,’ he gasped out as a peaceful bliss took over him and he slipped from consciousness into a painless slumber._ He could feel a panic attack beginning, he gasped out ragged puffs of air. John tried to sit up but his whole body was heavy and lethargic. Both hands clawed at the sheets as his shoulder flared up in pain. Tears trickled down his cheeks as the world went black.

~*~

When John awoke it was with a completely sleep sated body and mind, that hadn’t happened since even before he joined the army. He felt fresh and alert. The events of the previous night came flooding back, he gingerly touched his scarred shoulder remembering the searing pain. It wasn’t worth the trauma of what his mind and body endured. Quietly he promised himself he would not take the pills again.

~*~

Within three days of his uninterrupted night’s sleep he was starting to feel the strain of refraining from sleeping in order to battle the night terrors. His whole body was wrung out, fatigued to its very core.

~*~

On the sixth day of abstaining from sleep his resolve crumbled. No longer could he continue with his day’s, his movements and mind had become lethargic. Each step had become a chore. That night he did what he promised himself he wouldn’t.

This time his subconscious replayed not his own suffering but Dan’s death, _his eyes fluttering closed. The blood had seeped through the bandages drenching his hands in warm sticky blood_ , granted it was better than the searing hot pain that ripped through his shoulder. But this caused his chest to contract into a painful knot, there was nothing he could have realistically done to save Dan’s life. Even so it did not lessen the pain that he wasn’t able to do anything to even lessen the suffering he had gone through in his final moments. The drug abruptly cut his thoughts off there, plummeting him into darkness.

~*~

John stopped going to therapy, he figured with the pills he didn’t need it anymore. But then his next obstacle exposed itself, getting the drugs once his last prescription ran out. In his mind his only option was to obtain them illegally. He had never bought drugs before and didn’t have a clue how to get them. So he took to the streets one Saturday night, slipped a homeless girl a fifty pound note and asked them if they could point him in the right direction. Luckily for him the youth didn’t high tail it the moment he handed over the note but led him personally to ‘a friend of hers’ that sold just what he needed.

The dealer was not at all what he had expected. Then again he had a clichéd portrait conjured in his head of a shady man with his front teeth knocked out which realistically was from his own penchant for really bad movies. No, this man was tall, he had legs that went on for miles. Clad in an elegant, what John assumed to be, very expensive suit. Over the suit was a woollen Belstaff coat that hung to just below his knees. The man’s countenance could only be described as alabaster, it appeared as though it had been carved from marble, all angles and sharp edges. Atop of this he had a shock of black curls which brought out the quicksilver ocean blue eyes that pierced into John.

The man took one glance over John, which instinctively led to him straightening out his spine stretching himself to his full height, which didn’t do much considering the man had at least a foot on him in height. The sweeping glance lasted a mere half minute at most, finishing his inspection, which gave John the shivers, he bore his eyes into John’s with a smug sardonic smile stretching out his cupid’s bow lips.

Whatever about the man’s appearance that he hadn’t expected, his voice once seeing him really threw John off kilter, it clearly screamed public school, but with a deep baritone that made every utterance sound as if it was dredged from the very pit of his chest.

‘Liquid or tablet?’ he drawled.

This man really did take pleasure from surprising John, ‘Eh... How did you-?’ he meekly replied.

Flapping a hand about the man, he really needed to find out his name, cut him off, ‘Easy, you’re clearly having trouble sleeping, bags under your eyes, drawn out features, laboured movements, you’re obviously looking for diazepam. So, do you prefer ingestible tablets or injectable liquid?’

Mouth agape, John got himself back in check, ‘ _Who are you?_ ’ he inquired in complete astonishment.

‘Holmes. Sherlock Holmes.’

Oh god, he really was some posh toff, ‘Uhm, John Watson,’ he replied, feeling the need to add his own name.

‘Right well, ten milligram tablet diazepam,’ he merely stated holding out a box of pills.

Completely dumbfounded John took the pills examining the packet, ‘If you know what I wanted why did you ask?’

Sherlock looked thoughtfully to his right, ‘Social niceties?’ he asserted, although it sounded more like a question.

This was turning out much weirder than John had suspected. Not sure what else to say he handed over the money he owed and strode back towards his flat not pausing to look back at the mysterious ma-, Sherlock, as he left.

~*~

His visits to Sherlock became a regular occurrence, he even began to enjoy his trips. That made him sound like some affection craving cat sticking around the house that left him out a bowel of cream, he supposed he kind of was. He had no remaining family, that he knew of anyway, and his decade in the army left him with no friends that remained in London or who he had any real intentions of getting back into contact with. Warped, that was the way he had come to think of his life.

So when he rounded the corner to their usual rendezvous with two cups of coffee, one black with two sugars for Sherlock and black with a splash of milk for himself, to see three burly men huddled around Sherlock who was huddled into a ball like an armadillo his internal soldier kicked in. Dropping the coffees he ran at the man brutally kicking Sherlock in the face. John grabbed the meat heads tee shirt, whirled him around and put all his weight behind a brutal left hook that knocked the guy out and sent a flash of pain up through his wrist straight to his injured shoulder.

The other two thugs rounded on him forgetting about the beaten man on the ground. John’s height really wasn’t something that worked to his advantage especially with two beefed up brutes going at him at once. If it wasn’t for his military training he was certain he’d be smashed to bits by now.

Using his right hand, as his left arm was still acting a bit dodgy after that last punch, he cracked one of the men’s ribs, which sent him staggering over to a wall to catch his breath and clutch at his, no doubt, extremely pained side. They really didn’t have much finesse about their fighting, probably relying on brute force.

Adrenalin coursed through John’s veins he ran at the last one standing, placing him in a tight chokehold. Unfortunately the guy knew how to use his size to his advantage and threw John off with a well placed elbow to his solar plexus. John tumbled to the ground with a grunt. Before he could propel himself back to his feet a large booted foot was pressing down on his windpipe. As his vision began to cloud a shot ruptured through the humid air.

The man’s face fell slack as he crashed to the pavement. John lay on the ground trying to catch his breath, when a pale face swam into view still clutching a gun.

‘Where in the hell did you get a British Army issued Browning L9A1,’ John gasped out between laboured breaths.

Sherlock glanced at the gun held in his long elegant fingers and back to John, who no doubt looked a complete mess, when they both broke out into a fit of giggles. Minutes passed as the two men laughed to themselves in a truly undignified manner, considering someone had just been killed at point blank range with an illegal firearm.

The shrill wail of siren approaching in the distance cut through their laughter, with one glance at each other Sherlock stretched out his arm offering it to John. Grabbing hold he pulled himself to his feet. With one last glance around John took note of the man whose ribs he had cracked, knocked unconscious by the wall. When had that happened? With a sidelong glance over to Sherlock the smirk plastered across his face answered his question. John guffawed and took off at a run into the evening, with Sherlock hot on his heels. The London sky was a wash of lemon, mauve and pink which cast them as dark silhouettes as they disappeared from the scene.

~*~

When he returned home John was completely exhausted, the exertion of the fight and brief sprint across London really did him in once the adrenaline drained from his system. Not to mention sewing up Sherlock’s cut cheekbone and the nasty gash above his left eyebrow. The minute his head hit the pillow he was gone from consciousness into a seamless sleep.

~*~

John slowly drifted back into consciousness stretching out his sleep sated body with a groan. Completely contented he snuggled back into his warm sheets. When it hit him it was like a freight train, he had gone to sleep without having to take pills and gone undisturbed from dreams for a whole, glancing at the digital clock on his bedside table, ten hours.

Realisation dawned on him, Ella was wrong; he wasn’t haunted by the war. He missed it.


End file.
